Episode 3: Why Nursing Fails

In this episode, Lindsay discusses why nursing and lactation often fail in modern society. She explains that the high rate of complications in birth and low nursing rates can be attributed to the disruption of the natural mammalian biology of birth.

Lindsay emphasizes the importance of immediate bonding and imprinting between Mother and baby after birth, and how this process is often disrupted in hospital settings. She highlights the permanent negative impact of separating Mothers and babies, and the need for a supportive and non-disruptive birthing environment to ensure successful nursing and milk supply.

Key Takeaways:

1. Nursing and lactation often fail due to the disruption of the natural mammalian biology of birth.

2. Separating mothers and babies after birth disrupts the bonding and imprinting process, leading to low milk supply and difficulties with latching.

3. Hospital settings and routine procedures in obstetrics contribute to the disruption of the natural birthing process.

4. Mothers should advocate for a non-disruptive birthing environment and immediate bonding with their babies to ensure successful nursing and milk supply.

Quotes:

•  "The number one cause for low lactation rates, low milk supply, and low nursing rates is disruption." 

• "If we disrupt the environment where we give birth and the people within that environment, we sabotage the imprinting process that is essential for successful nursing and milk supply." 

• "Our nursing rates and lactation problems are a result of the disruption caused by hospital birth and the lack of support for the natural mammalian biology of birth." 

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome to the Birth Like a Mammal podcast. Birth Like a Mammal is a community created for both parents and birth workers to learn and understand how birth was designed to function in alignment with mammalian biology. I'm your host, Lindsay Askins. I'm a doula and birth coach, a mother of three, and an expert on mammalian biology. I have a degree in animal science, spent many years breeding horses, and have given birth like a mammal three times. After a decade of supporting families as a doula, it's clear to me that obstetrics makes no connection to mammalian biology in regards to birth. And as a result, we have a high rate of complications for mothers and babies giving birth. Whether you are a parent or a doula, I created this podcast and this community to teach you what it means to birth like a mammal. Humans are mammals, and we are designed to birth like mammals. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to the Birth Like a Mammal podcast. This is your host, Lindsay. This is episode number three, and I'm really excited about this topic today. The topic today is why nursing and lactation fail, for lack of a better word. This particular topic in my long list of topics that we're going to discuss on this podcast is actually the reason I started Birth Like a Mammal. It was kind of like the catalyst for the name of this community and the whole idea for the podcast, the book, the course is this very subject. So it's kind of funny I'm doing it as episode three, but it's just sort of how it worked out. When we talk about birth like a mammal, we're we're talking about mammals, right? And if you remember from high school biology, the trait that sets us apart from other animal species is the fact that we produce milk and our offspring suckle from a teeth, the breast, whatever it is based on the species, and drink milk to grow, to stay alive, to thrive, to develop. That is that is the one component that sets us apart from fish and insects and reptiles and chickens, right? Like we birth live offspring and we nurse them with our mammary glands, producing milk in our own bodies. Literally, the purpose of boobs, regardless of what the media or dudes have to say about it, that's why we have boobs, y'all. So we can nurse our babies. I'd also like to make the point that I very intentionally use the word nursing when I talk about this. I don't particularly care for the word breastfeeding, which is normally the word you hear. I feel like that term, I don't know my history, correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like the term, the word breastfeeding came from the time, the era when formula and bottles were really being pushed, which also kind of started in the 50s. But I was born in 1980, and my mom said that most of her friends having babies at the time were not nursing them, even though she was. But I think she was sort of like the odd man out or whatever at the time. So I think we came up with this term breastfeeding to differentiate, oh, I'm feeding my baby from my breast, not from this bottle, which is fine. But I just feel like that word breastfeeding really plays into the breast versus bottle debate, which I've stated on previous episodes. I don't like to debate this stuff because there's so many varying factors on why people make the decisions they make, why mothers birth the way they birth, why they feed the way they feed, why they go to work or don't go to work or work at home or work outside of the home. I mean, all these things. And we don't need to debate it because we all have such different lives and different factors playing into our decision making. So another because somebody who's exclusively pumping for their baby for whatever reason, technically the baby is still being nourished from the breast, right? Just via the pump. They're not nursing, so to speak. They're not latched onto the breast. And that's fine too. In the end, it just doesn't really matter. This particular episode is about nursing, about a baby suckling from the breast to receive nourishment to grow and develop. That is the purpose of this particular episode. I'm not going to get into the weeds about why we nurse or who we nurse or why we didn't nurse. Doesn't matter. But I want to talk about why this gets derailed, why there's so many complications with it, why in the United States we have really low rates of this. And again, this is all being approached from like the evolutionary standpoint, the birth like a mammal standpoint, what mammals are designed to do and how we're supposed to operate and how this process is supposed to be carried out, and so on. So this particular topic is why really the like motivating factor to start birth like a mammal. As a as a mom, as a human, as a doula, I hear so often about people having nursing/slash lactation problems, like you know, low milk supply. I hear about it all of the time. And even though in the United States, the stats are like 80 to 85% of babies are being nursed at birth, like that's how we start off, which is really great. I mean, I would love to see like the historical stats, which we probably don't have, but think about it, you know, 500, 1000, 2,000 years ago. If only, only 85% of babies are nursed at birth, like that's another like 15% that died, right? Which maybe that maybe those are the stats over the course of history. I have no clue. But in in this modern world where we have all this life-saving stuff and we have formula and we have donor milk and we have bottles and we have pumps and we have all this stuff now. To me, I feel like 85% is kind of low, right? Like, if even right now, if we went to an indigenous culture, I bet their rates are much higher than 85%, right? Because the existence and the progression of their species, of their tribe, of their people depends upon it. You know, they don't have Walmart with formula and bottles. It's not a thing. So just like different perspectives on those stats. But in the US, about 80 to 85% of babies, when they are born, they are being nursed. However, by about six months of age, so six months postpartum, that drops down to like 60%, which I think is still higher than the 80s. I didn't look up the stats for this episode. But again, 60% were like, oh, that's more than half. That's great, right? But if you approach it from an evolutionary standpoint or a historical standpoint, like that's still 40% of babies that don't have milk at seven months old, which is still very much a baby. Those are our stats. Playing into that is women working. So a lot of that is like just our terrible, terrible, terrible. I like to use the word abysmal maternity leave in America. I mean, it is a joke. Like six weeks. If you have had a baby, you and I already know like six weeks is a joke. Nobody needs to be, wants to be, is ready to be going back to work outside of their home, being away from their baby six to eight, nine hours a day, driving in traffic, walking through an office. You know, some people are still bleeding then, off and on. We all know that that is not near enough time. And then what makes it even worse is if you have surgery, if you have a cesarea, and they're like, oh, we'll give you an extra two weeks. You get eight now. Like, what? I mean, it's like major abdominal surgery. And we're like, oh, you can have two months off. I mean, a minimum should be six months at a minimum. And among all of the developed countries in the world, we rank last for maternal leave, for parental leave. And all of these other developed countries, especially in Europe, have six to 12 to 18 month parental leave times. And guess what? They have higher nursing rates too. So that's a whole nother conversation that I don't really want to focus on on today's episode, but it definitely plays into why our stats are that by about six months of age, only 60% of infants are still being nursed. I mean, I get it, man. You gotta go back to work and like maybe there's no place to pump at work. Maybe your body doesn't respond to the pump. Mine didn't. After about two, three months, like my body didn't really respond to the pump. But I nursed my babies well past a year. In fact, my last one nursed till she was three. But I pumped nothing to save my life after about six months. Like my body just doesn't respond to the pump. And I know that's true for other women as well. And even if you do have a really successful pumping journey, you know, maybe the time doesn't work out for you to pump. If you're active duty military, it's very difficult for you to leave whatever your job is to go pump. You know, in a lot of areas, it's a woman working with a team of men, like the military. Maybe you're a teacher at school and like you only get certain breaks, you know, based on the school schedule and you're pumping in the bathroom or your car. Just none of that is ideal. None of it is in alignment with mammalian biology, none of it's natural. All of it is us asking our bodies to do something that they're not really designed to do. And from an evolutionary standpoint, they don't really understand how to do. So it's just an uphill battle, no matter which way you look at it. And that plays into these statistics. So, maternity leave, that might be a different episode. I'm not sure, but that has a lot to do with it. But secondary to that, I think is a lack of support, you know. In my generation, most of our moms, like I stated earlier, didn't nurse babies. So I was kind of lucky. Like, I feel like my mom was helpful when it came to nursing. But a lot of people my age and a lot of my friends and clients, I mean, often I hear that they've said their moms, like, oh, you know, honey, you don't, you don't have to do all that. Like, that's not necessary. You know, you can just, you can just give them a bottle. It'd just be so much easier. So that's part of it too, is like lack of support. You know, maybe it's a single mom and she's just overly tired. There's other kids, she's not getting enough sleep, no one's helping her at night. Maybe it's an unsupportive partner. You know, often we hear men kind of feel jealous of the fact that the breasts are being used for their actual intended purpose, but there's that whole dynamic. And then even there's just partners that don't understand the amount of support a mom needs. And so they're not intentionally being unsupportive, they're just not aware that they're not being supportive enough. I mean, there's just so many variations of the phrase lack of support within our society and how that looks for different families and different moms. And so I think that plays into it as well. And then there's just like the social stigma, right? Like I just saw, again, this morning another article. A woman was nursing a five-month-old y'all, a little tiny baby on an airplane, an international flight. And the stewardess asked her to stop doing that. I mean, if I had a nickel for how many times I've heard this happen on an airplane, airport, a restaurant, a school function, some public place, a bus, a train. It is absurd. So here we, you know, within our species, our species is defined by the fact that we nurse our live birthed offspring. Like that is what we are. We're mammals. And then as we're going about existing within our society, we have other mammals saying, Oh, you can't do that here. When it's the very definition of our species. Like that's literally what makes humans, along with our cognitive function, but what makes us separate from all these other species is our ability to feed our babies with our mammary glands. That is being a mammal. And then we have a stewardess saying, Oh, but you can't be a mammal on this airplane. I mean, it's just absurd. So we have the social sigma, you know, that if you're a young mom or a new mom, or maybe you don't have a lot of support, that's a thing. Thankfully, I had only one experience with that in the, I think I nursed collectively, like 90 months or something crazy like that. But collectively, I only had one experience where I ordered some food in a restaurant with my first baby. She was about a year old. We had driven in from out of town. I was arriving there for a photo shoot. So she'd been in the car seat for three or four hours or something. And she'd slept most of that time. But usually when she woke up, you know, she wanted to eat, she was hungry. Plus, you know, just reconnecting with her, like the physical and emotional bonding of that after she'd been stuck in her car seat facing backwards for three or four hours. And so I sat down and nursed her in the restaurant while I was waiting for my food. And the manager came over and was like, um, you can't do that in here. There's children in here. And thankfully, I was 31, 32 years old, and I was already a doula at this point. I was already very well educated on the laws surrounding nursing. And I was also, you know, had this brain that I have right now of what mammals are. And I just looked at her and I was like, that is ridiculous. I mean, she just didn't sway me at all. I just looked at her and I was like, first of all, you're breaking the law. Second of all, you're completely overstepping your bounds of what's appropriate to say to people. And third, if you don't like it, you can just not look at me. And then fourth, I said, I are you a mother? And she said, yes. And I didn't do that in public. And I said, Well, that's really sad that you're a mother and you're still speaking to other mothers like this. I mean, I just came right back at her. She didn't sway me. But had I not been a doula, had I not been 32 years old, had I not had the personality that I have, had I not had the education that I have, you know, maybe I'm young, maybe I didn't mean to have a baby and I'm 18 and my mom makes fun of me because I'm nursing and I don't have a supportive partner and all of my girlfriends don't have babies, so they don't get it. Saying something like that to that kind of mother might really sway her and may completely sabotage her nursing relationship with her baby. Like it's just nobody's business. I'm kind of in the weeds here. But the point is that is a factor also in our nursing stats. But today, what I really, really, really want to focus on is how this all starts. All really starts at birth. That's where this all starts. If you had, if anyone has low milk supply, a baby that's having a hard time latching, maybe you feel like the bond isn't there to nurse, it all starts at birth. So again, this episode is not about whether you should or should not nurse. This is not the breast versus bottle debate. None of that matters. I'm specifically talking about how nursing relationships get derailed, why milk supply isn't enough or it ceases to function. That's what this episode is about. And it all starts at birth. So the number one cause for low lactation rates, you know, low milk supply, and low nursing rates is disruption. That's the number one cause. So a lot of mothers are walking around and they think it's their fault they didn't make enough milk, it's their fault they couldn't get the baby latched, it's their fault that they couldn't pump, right? It's not. It's not. We fail to realize that the environment where we give birth and the people within that environment have everything to do with milk supply, latching, bonding, all of it. And if you disrupt that environment, that space, that process, sometimes you have sabotaged it permanently. Not always. Often it is salvaged, sometimes it functions, not optimally, but it functions. So birth, like how and with whom and where you give birth is going to affect your milk supply and your baby's ability to nurse and the and the two of you, the mother baby dyad, it's going to affect you days later, weeks later, months later. It's not just that one day. So within mammalian biology, we are designed to imprint on our babies right at birth, the second they are born. So dogs start licking their puppies the second they come out. Cats do the same thing. Horses do the same thing. They kind of nuzzle them. There's a little bit of licking there. Like there's a lot of all this like physical, emotional bonding going on where bodies are touching. And in the case of some animals, like fluids are changing course. I mean, women do it. The baby comes out, what do we do? We pull them immediately to our chest, we kiss them, our skin, you know, it's a skin to skin, all of that. That is the imprinting. That is the bonding. It is designed to happen immediately, right away. Something I learned when I was breeding horses is, you know, we usually with these like fancy, expensive horses and these fancy, expensive foals that we're waiting on, blah, blah, blah. We put them in these like big, cushy stalls. It's like, you know, two and a half, three times the size of a normal stall. It's got lots of fluffy bedding in case, in case the mare's standing up when she berths, the baby falls onto something soft. Normally they lay down, but sometimes they stand up. Often in these fancy barns, there's cameras on this situation. We have heat lamps, so there's a little bit of light. We keep all the lights down. Like everyone knows that you are supposed to protect this space. It's supposed to be quiet and dark without disruption. Everyone knows that. I knew that in undergrad when I was taking a horse breeding class. We were assigned a mayor. We were in teams, we were assigned a mayor. And the whole purpose of this semester class was we were supposed to be there when she folded and we were supposed to document it all and make sure the baby got the colostrum and blah, blah, blah. And we were told over and over and over again in this class, as undergrads, I was 21 years old, do not go in the stall while she's in labor or while she's birthing, or up to a half hour after the baby is born. We were told that over and over. That was like the premise of like what not to do in this class. And our grade depended on, you know, how we documented her in the last days leading up to birth. You know, we'd go out to the pasture and document what she looked like, whether there was some milk. And that was like the basis of like when to bring her in the barn. So we had her in like the folding stall, so she didn't give birth out in the pasture because we had coyotes and stuff. You know, we so we wanted her safe in the barn. And we were told it's probably gonna happen in the middle of the night. So, like there was all this like information given to us on how not to disrupt this process. Because if we did, now we're introducing risk, which causes complications. And in these, in this particular scenario, like there was a lot of money riding on these horses, like quarter horse breeding in Texas. It's a whole thing. So everything we were told in this class was how not to disrupt the process. And that was like what happened when I was pregnant with my first baby and learning how obstetrics goes, and it was so contradictory to everything I had learned in my college education. I studied animal science, specifically equine science, but in this like breeding class, all these things we were told not to do because it would be disruptive, it was like all the things obstetrics does all the time. And so when I learned that, I was like, wait, these are clashing. Like this isn't, this isn't how this is supposed to go. So we knew way back then, do not go in that stall during labor, you know, while the foal is being birthed, like when it's half in, half out. And for the first 15 to 30 minutes after birth, you do not go in there. Don't talk, don't turn on the light, don't make any noise to make this mare think that she's possibly in danger and she gets up because we would interrupt the imprinting process. And we knew that. The foal needs to stand up within like 15 minutes and start nursing. That's the cool thing about horses, is they're born and then they'll stand up 15 minutes later. It's crazy. So the mare usually does all this imprinting, right? She's nuzzling the foal, she's helping the amniotic sack get off of the foal. She's doing all this stuff where she's nuzzling and licking and all this stuff. And then eventually she stands up and then she starts nuzzling the foal, like encouraging him to stand up, right? And so she does all this and sometimes she makes noises at him. And the whole purpose of all that is like, hey, get up, get up, get up, because you have to nurse. You need this colostrum, you need the passive immunity transfer so that you can survive. And so there's that component of colostrum that has like that IgG, like the passive immunity, like all of her antibodies gets passed to the baby. We are the same. We also do that. So the foal should ideally stand up within about 15, 20 minutes and start nursing and get that colostrum, get that passive immunity. So our structure back then was do not go in this stall for at least a half hour. And then if a half hour came and passed and the foal was still on the ground and hadn't nursed, that was when we were given the green light to go in and help him get up. So we don't touch mom. And also you need to be really weary of moms. And sometimes the horses, they're not normally aggressive animals, but a brand new mama can be aggressive towards you because now there's humans in her safe space with her new baby. So we go in super quiet and gentle. Again, we leave the delight, the lights low, and we just try to help the foal get up and kind of get him going towards the teat to get some milk. And as soon as all that's happening, we leave, get out of the stall. We don't talk to her, we don't pet everybody, we don't have this conversation. We literally just try to physically help the foal stand up and get latched on for the colostrum. So that is what's supposed to also happen for us, right? That's what we're also supposed to do. So let's take that same scenario and stick it in a hospital room. So now we're in the hospital room and the baby has emerged. However, that's happened. And they say, Oh, we need to take the baby for observation. Or maybe they don't even say that. Sometimes they just take the baby to the warming table across the room and the mom's still on the bed. So right there, in the initial five seconds of the baby emerging, they have disrupted it. Right there. That baby is programmed by evolution. The mom is programmed by evolution. All of it, by the mammalian biology that's been going on for millions of years. Both mother and baby are programmed to be together seconds after birth. That baby should be on mama's chest, smelling and hearing mama, mama's kissing baby, mama smelling baby, all of this like mammal bonding imprinting is happening, right? That is so essential to milk supply, you guys. That is everything that tells the mother's body, okay, the baby's here, time to make milk so it doesn't die. It's that simple, right? If you're a wild horse or a wolf or whatever, an elephant, if the mama's body doesn't make the milk, the baby dies. And then if that just keeps happening, the species dies. The reproduction has to be optimal, has to be functioning properly for the species to survive. And all the other mammal species know that. Their instincts know that. The evolution. Has programmed that. So now we've separated mom and baby in this hospital room. So even if mom isn't aware of it, on a cellular level, on a subconscious level, her body's like, where's the baby? Where's the baby? Where's the baby? So it's getting all these messages like, oh, there's no baby. There's no baby. So right there, we're already disrupting the whole milk supply message, right? The baby's over on the warmer. Most of the time, the baby is screaming its head off because the baby's like, Where's my mom? Where's my mom? Where's my mom? Where's my mom? Like immediately. Both mom and baby are like, where's the other one? And and you might be standing in this hospital room and not see or notice any of that if you're not aware of this component of mammalian biology, but it's happening. And in my experience, most OB staff is not aware of this. They don't know this is happening, which is horrifying, different conversation. So let's say they only put the baby on the warmer for five minutes, which is quote, not that long, right? It is though. Five minutes is a long time. If we gave birth, like cave people in the wild, five minutes is way long enough for a coyote, a wolf, a bear, whatever, to snatch that baby up and take it and kill it. Five minutes is so much time. The mare knows that she needs to get her baby up and get some colostrum. She's got 15 minutes to make that happen because if they're out in the wild birthing and the coyotes come, they need to run. And guess what? The baby has to run too. So he needs to get up because that's his survival skill, right? Horses are fight or flight. Obviously, a baby's not fighting, so he's flighting. So you got to get up, baby, because if the if the threat comes, you got to go. You got to run. You got to keep up with mom. So humans, our survival skill set when we're born is to be in the arms of our mother, right? So this baby is programmed by evolution. He doesn't know he's in a hospital room. He doesn't know anything about modern obstetrics. He doesn't know anything about the world he's in. He doesn't know that he's in a building with locking doors and there's no bears or coyotes. He doesn't have any concept of any of that. All he knows is he's not in the arms of his mother. He can't smell her, he can't hear her, and he is freaking out. He is high stress, cortisol through the roof. Where's my mom? Where's my mom? Where's my mom? Because he literally thinks he's going to die. Because he is programmed genetically by evolution, by his mammalian biology, to be in the arms of his mother. So he is safe from danger. There is no awareness of this in hospital birth. Zero. Nobody talks about it. Nobody knows it. Nobody even considers that the baby feels as though his life is threatened while lying on the warming table. All of these strangers around him, he doesn't know these people. He doesn't recognize the smell or the sounds of these people. It's not his mother. So that's happening. So now we have disruption of signals for milk supply, and then we have disruptions of signals to the baby, like, oh, you don't have a mom. There isn't one. You're alone. So that screws up all the stuff that's supposed to happen for the baby to look for the breast, right? To look for the nipple, to latch on, to get the colostrum. Like we're just completely sabotaging this entire process. That's the best case scenario is the five minutes. Very often it's 15 minutes. Sometimes it's an hour. Think about the babies they whisk off to the NICU for 12 hours, 18 hours, two days, a week. And then they hand the baby back to the mom and everyone's like, oh my gosh, like your milk's just not coming in. And this baby's having such a hard time latching. Well, yeah, you guys completely dissolved the imprinting that's supposed to take place seconds after birth. You dissolved it. If I go into the stall seconds after the full emerges from the mare, and I pick up the full and walk out of the stall with it. I mean, you guys already know the answer to this. The mother's gonna go berserk, right? She's gonna go nuts. She's gonna try to tear the stall down to get to her baby. The baby's gonna freak out. Who are these people? Why am I being carried? What's going on? Where's my mom? And let's say we go put the baby in a stall down at the end of the barn for five minutes or 30 or 12 hours. And then we bring it back to the mom. What do you think is gonna happen? I bet you guys already know the answer. She's not gonna nurse it. She's gonna reject it, probably. Same with bears, cats, dogs, sheep, pigs, all of it. But we do this to humans every single day, and then we're like, oh, why aren't we nursing well? Let's get the lactation consultant. You guys, it's so easy to fix this. All it takes is not separating mothers and babies at birth, period. That's it. It doesn't matter if you need to do an apgar score. It doesn't matter if the baby needs some help. However, if you don't cut cords immediately at birth, they usually don't need help, but that's also a separate conversation. You can do newborn exams on mom's chest, you can do resuscitation on mom's chest, you can do all kinds of things on mom's chest. Also, you don't need to do a newborn exam the second the baby arrives. You can do that hours later. Doesn't matter. It's all just disruption and it's all preventable and it's all fixable. All of it. It's that simple. The problem is if we brought this up to OB staff and we said, hey, how about you guys stop separating moms and babies at birth? Stop putting babies on warmers, stop doing newborn exams 16 seconds after a baby's born. You don't even have to touch a baby to do an apgar score. You can just look at it. Home birth midwives do it all the time. And that's how I know this can happen. I've had three home births, I've attended many home births. They don't do this. There's no disruption like that. And guess what? The stats show that babies born at home and the mother's birthing babies at home have higher nursing rates and better milk supply. Isn't that something? Now, there are midwives that are basically wolves in sheep's clothing and they show up and basically bring the hospital to your home. Ask me how I know. I've seen that too. But for the most part, if you get a, you know, aware, experienced midwife who understands mammalian birth, everything's in alignment and the disruption factor isn't there. But obstetrics is so disruptive. Everything they do is so disruptive. The lights, the noise, the talking, the hip block for the IV that you're just, of course, gonna have to have, the constant monitoring, the lack of nourishment, and I mean, all of it, it's just so disruptive. And then the baby arrives, and then we completely sever the mammalian imprinting that's supposed to take place. So, mamas, if you're listening and you had a hard time nursing your baby, you had a hard time making milk, you had a hard time pumping. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. The imprinting process was disrupted, sabotaged, destroyed, dissolved, whatever you want to say. Maybe you managed to salvage some of it, which is incredible. I've watched women do that. They've somehow salvaged what has almost basically been destroyed, and that's incredible. Women are incredible. And you did your best. Maybe you got up at 2 a.m. to pump. You took 47 breaks at work to pump, and that is so much work, and I applaud you. That is incredible. But at the end of the day, the battle you're fighting was not created by you. It was created by the people in your birthing space, the people in the environment where your baby arrived. And then it was compounded by, you know, your stupid maternity leave and your workspace that doesn't bode well for pumping. There's so many factors, you know, and your partner that tells you nursing two months is enough, or your mom that tells you just to give the baby a bottle. There's just like so many obstacles for us to do what we're supposed to inherently naturally do as mammals. We're so detached from nature. So think about, you know, I mean, I've seen moms, they have a hospital birth that's, you know, otherwise standard and normal, vaginal birth, no pitocin, blah, blah, blah. And they have a really hard time nursing that baby. And the lactation consultant comes in, which I think it's hilarious that we've come up with this phrase lactation consultant. Like here, another job we've created that we don't need because if we would just stop messing up the process, we wouldn't have a need for this job. And then truthfully, I really haven't seen any lactation consultants that I'm super impressed with and that actually help. Often they just encourage pumping or formula and sometimes even derail what the mom has has salvaged on her own. I'm just not that impressed overall with LCs, but whatever. So we bring in this lactation consultant and you do all these things and you you try to get back on track, but then that same mom will go on to have a home birth. And then it's like this total like black and white contrast, right? Like she's like, oh my gosh, my milk just came in. I nursed the baby, and it was easy. And I mean, it's not ever easy, but there wasn't all these obstacles to overcome. And sometimes even then, people won't make the connection that it was the environment, it was the lack of disruption. She was able to imprint on the baby that was born at home versus the baby that was born in the hospital that was separated from her for however long. That's all it is, you guys. Our nursing rates, our lactation problems, all of it, the latching, it's just disruption or lack of disruption. That's all it is. We're mammals. We have to have our babies immediately, seconds after they're born, an imprint on them to have that milk supply, to have that bond so the baby wants to latch. I should also add in a baby that's been on an epidural for hours and hours and hours is super sleepy and is not alert. And I don't know if you've seen videos of babies that are born without medication. They literally can physically crawl to the breast. If you set them on your belly, they will literally like like little worms, they'll like inch their way up to the breast and latch on, just like any other mammal, just like the foal that stands up and finds the teeth, or the puppies whose eyes are closed and they smell around, you know, the space and they find the teeth of the mama dog. Human babies do that too. But so often we just see these babies born super sleepy from epidurals and they're just like passed out because they're exhausted and hours and hours go by and they haven't latched, and that's another signal that gets sent to your body that screws up milk supply, another disruption. But if a baby is born without the influence of medication and given to its mother immediately, or she catches it and pulls it up to her, the percentage of women who cannot make milk for that baby and the percentage of babies that cannot latch effectively is super, super, super small. Really small. It is not the stats that we have for the rest of modern society, birthing babies within obstetrics under the influence of drugs. Totally different because it's the lack of disruption. The imprinting process happens. All of the communication that's supposed to take place on a cellular level happens because it's not disrupted or stolen or destroyed or dissolved. So when we separate mothers and babies in those initial seconds, minutes, hours after birth, we deeply disturb mammalian biology and the processes that is supposed to take place to ensure the baby's survival. And we don't ever really think about it like that because we're like, well, you know, we'll just go get formula. If we can't make milk, we'll get donor milk. I'm like, that's great that we have that in this modern world. Do we need formula sometimes? Totally. Has it saved some babies' lives? Absolutely. But the process is designed to ensure the baby's survival. And if we look at it from that standpoint, we might place more significance and importance on how it should happen and really, really, really protect it from disruption so that it can function optimally. We have just separated mothers and babies for so long that it's just become so routine. And so we have all these people educated within the system of allopathic medicine that have no awareness or understanding of what they're doing when they do that routine procedure. They're not connecting the dots at how that is affecting our entire society. I mean, again, not a breast milk versus formula debate, but we are designed to drink breast milk at birth. That is the most optimal way our gut flora develops, our microbiome develops, the passive immunity happens to make our immune system start functioning the way it's supposed to. That's how it's designed. So when we don't do that for lots and lots and lots of people, I mean, look at us. We've got cancer and diabetes and heart disease and rampant obesity and like all this stuff, sleep problems, depression, anxiety. That all comes from birth, you guys. And then it also just gets compounded by the way we live this unhealthy lifestyle. But it literally affects the way we birth, literally affects our entire society. Even dads, same. Still affects them. It's just if we went to any other mammal species and separated them from their offspring at birth, they would almost always not nurse the baby and or reject the baby when it was returned. And then that would affect that entire species, right? Like we know this with animals. We're not any different. We are the same. We disrupt it with drugs and we disrupt it with all this management. And then we're like, why didn't this work right? Why don't you have any milk? Why isn't your baby latching? Well, because we totally screwed it up. Anyway, the purpose of this episode is can we stop blaming mothers for low milk supply or their baby's crappy latch or their inability to pump at work because they had to go back way too early after giving birth? Can we just talk about how we are disrupting the process and then putting it all on moms to fix it, but then not giving them the space and time to do that? It's crazy that we do this. It's so crazy. Okay, so wrapping this up, what can we do about this? My number one recommendation is to avoid hospital birth. I mean, if you're listening to this podcast and you're following this movement in this community, you're looking to birth like a mammal, or maybe you're curious what that is, right? If you want to birth like a mammal, you don't have a baby in a hospital because that's not mammalian birth. If you still choose to birth a baby in a hospital, do not allow any interference after birth. Do not let them take your baby. Do not allow anyone to touch your baby. Hire a care provider that doesn't do this. Ask them that prenatally. State your demands. Be very clear before you even go into labor. Choose a birthing place that does not do this routinely. Be very clear with your demands and what you need and what you expect to happen. Don't give in to their stupid nonsense that they have to take your baby and do some exam the second it's born. They don't have to do that. That's not necessary. Make sure that your partner is also on the same page as you and that they know how to enforce these boundaries at the time. If the baby emerges and they're trying to take the baby to the warming table, your partner can say, Whoa, we're not doing that. Baby goes to mom. Okay. If that's not a thing, hire a doula. This is what doulas do. But you can get a support team around you to protect these demands, protect these boundaries to ensure that your baby comes to you and you allow that imprinting process to take place. Your milk supply depends on it. If you feel during labor and birth, the staff is not supportive of this, you know, maybe you bring this up during labor in the early parts of labor when you can still have a conversation with people. You can request a staff change. Get a different nurse, get a different care provider. You're not stuck with the people that you've been assigned to just because you've been admitted to the hospital. You can request a staff change at any time. Anytime. Just remember that you're in charge. It's your baby, it's your milk supply, it's your nursing relationship that you have to take home with you after you leave this place and that will affect you for the rest of your life. If you have any questions on that, I'm happy to help. I've nursed all three of my babies for a cumulative time. I think I added it up. It was like 90 months or something crazy like that. I'm happy to support this. And I also work with people one-on-one for prenatal support, and we can talk about the types of questions you can ask your care provider to ensure that they are on the same page with you as this and to ensure that your demands are met and respected. You can reach out to us at join at birthlikeamammal.com. You can go to birthlikeamammal.com and fill out the contact form. You can also find me on Instagram at birth like a mammal. Happy to help. Send a message, send an email. It's something I'm very passionate about that the nursing rates in America get better because they can be better by women just demanding what we need. If we rely on the society and the men that run it to change or improve the system, it's not gonna happen. It's gonna take us saying, nope, this is what we demand, this is what we need. And really, from a biological standpoint, an evolutionary standpoint, it is our responsibility to do that. We are the creators of new life. We are the ones that create the milk. We are the ones that birth the babies. We are the ones responsible for feeding the babies. It's up to us. Hope you've enjoyed this. I hope you learned something. And as always, feel free to email us for suggestions, questions, comments, concerns. I'm happy to help. I hope you have a great day. Thank you so much for being here today. The Birth Like a Mammal podcast is produced by me, Lindsay Askins. It is edited by Stephanie Winniger. If you enjoyed this episode or want to learn more, please reach out at join at birthlike a mammal.com. Birthlike a Mammal offers courses, classes, webinars, coaching, and an upcoming book. You can also follow us on both Instagram and TikTok at Birthlike a Mammal. If you have not subscribed to our newsletter, head over to birthlike a Mammal.com and subscribe now. My subscribers are the first to know when new podcast episodes drop, in addition to receiving the free monthly call link on the first Sunday of every month. That link goes out to subscribers only. If you learned something today, please share this community with anyone who is pregnant or supporting families during pregnancy and birth. Have a great rest of your day.